I last wrote a blog post for my birthday last year, a little over a year ago. I had already slowed down my posting but then it suddenly stopped. I gave myself a million reasons. All of them were accurate.
I didn’t want to write about the pandemic. Writing about the pandemic was everywhere and I had nothing to add to that story, especially as a family who was relatively unaffected. But it also felt insensitive to avoid it.
I didn’t want to write about the racial reckoning of our country. My day job is in diversity, equity and inclusion and all day long I was writing, talking, arguing about what was going on so I didn’t want to say anything more about it. However as a DEI person I felt I should be talking about it on all the platforms I had access to, but as a white person, I also had no desire to take up space with my voice.
Blogging has become a thing of the past. Blogs aren’t really what they once were so I thought maybe it was time to let it go. But what to do with the energy I normally invested in this?
This evening though it hit me, these were all part of why I had stopped blogging but it wasn’t really the cause. At first when we started working from home, I was really enjoying it. Like most, I thought it was a vacation of kinds. No getting dressed, a little working from the couch and I even got to set myself up a nice at home office space. Fun.
But after months of no social plans, after long days with no work breaks (because who is there to talk to?) after telling everyone I was never going back to the office, I have recently realized that perhaps this is not working well for me.
My office building will be opening for the first time since COVID in July, for those who are comfortable returning. I didn’t think I wanted to go back, but I have come to realize that the more I am away from others, the more I withdraw from everything. I knew this about myself in theory, but the pandemic and working from home made it abundantly clear. And withdrawing from the world can mean not reaching out to people to make plans, not wanting to go back to the office, not having the motivation to go for a run/go outside or not making the effort to write. Not wanting to put words out in the world.
And so while I’m tempted to wait for something beautiful to write, for inspiration to hit me, I know that the first step is always the hardest. So the moment I realized why I wasn’t writing, I started typing. Got to start somewhere.
Seeking Misadventure 